Wonder Woman: The Complete First Season (review)

“Wondaaaaa Womannnnn! Wondaaaaa Womannnnn!” Oh man, I’d forgotten that refrain accompanying every kick and punch in the Amazon princess’s fight for truth, justice, and the American way, but one chorus of it and I’m back on the elementary school playground, spinning that Wonder Woman spin and off to save the world. Any thirtysomething American woman … more…

Margaret Cho: Revolution (review)

Margaret Cho is angry, and justifiably so. The list of things the standup comic/social activist/force of nature hates includes racism, the cultural pressures placed on women to be thin, President Bush, and ex-boyfriends (for starters), all fine things for a smart gal to get worked up about. But her rants on the state of her … more…

It Happened at the World’s Fair (review)

What happened at the world’s fair? Not much, as it turns out. Elvis Presley has a date with an adorably precocious seven-year-old Asian girl, falls in love with a nurse who’s somewhat older, breaks into song at the slightest provocation, applies for the budding astronaut program, and gets kicked in the shins (not once but … more…

I, Robot (review)

There’s a running joke in *I, Robot* about so-and-so being the ‘dumbest smart person ever’ and some other guy being the ‘dumbest dumb person ever.’ This is ironic, because *I, Robot* may well be the dumbest movie-that-thinks-it’s-smart ever.

Zhou Yu’s Train (review)

It’s pretty French for a Chinese movie, this bittersweet apparition of a flick, all train platforms and tortured romance and the filmy evanescence of love. Zhou Yu (the luminous Gong Li), a painter of ceramics, rides the train long hours twice a week to visit her boyfriend, Chen Qing (Tony Leung Ka Fai), a poet, … more…

Sleepover (review)

It is a sad commentary on how Hollywood squanders talent that the first studio feature from Joe Nussbaum — the guy who made that sneakily brilliant little piece of geeky satire “George Lucas in Love” — is this atrocious misadventure in teen self-absorption. Squandering all the tomboy-charm points she earned in the Spy Kids flicks, … more…

Nip/Tuck: The Complete First Season (review)

Is it too punny to call Nip/Tuck cutting? I expected a series about Miami plastic surgeons to be obsessed with the physical, and with physical perfection. I never expected it to be so audacious and biting in its obsession with exploring the psychological roots of the drive for perfection — on both sides of the … more…

King Arthur (review)

Leather and swords and British accents and gorgeous guys wielding them all can make a gal overlook a lot of badness in a flick. But not quite this much. Not when perhaps the grandest legend of British history gets thoroughly demythologized, and nothing rushes in to fill all the empty spaces but self-conscious, naive posturing about freedom and equality and self-determination.

The Clearing (review)

The cast is to die for: Robert Redford (Spy Game) as a retired executive, and Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man 2) as the blue-collar schmoe who kidnaps him for ransom; Helen Mirren (Calendar Girls) as the executive’s wife left to fend with FBI agents invading the house, and Alessandro Nivola (Laurel Canyon) as the grown son and … more…